Agile Development Cheat Sheet
Roles
Scrum Master
Schedules and leads the sprint meetings. Removes blockers. Keeps the team productive.
Product Owner
Represents the voice of the customer and the business. In charge of story prioritization.
Software Engineer
Builds new product features. Also in charge of writing unit tests.
Quality Engineer (QE)
In charge of quality assurance. Programmatically and manually tests new features. Files
bugs when features are broken or not built to specifications.
Meetings
Backlog Grooming
Occurs once per sprint. Add new user stories to the backlog, reprioritize stories, and
break down stories into tasks.
Planning Poker
Occurs once per sprint. Software engineers collectively agree on the scope for every
potential task coming up in the next sprint. Tasks are typically scoped to a number of
hours or days.
Sprint Planning
Occurs once per sprint. Determine which stories and tasks will be added to the next
sprint. Tasks should already be scoped before attending.
Daily Standup
Occurs once per day. Quick status update from each team member. Identify blockers.
Demo Day (Sprint Review)
Occurs once at the end of a sprint. Each member demos what they completed to the team.
Units of Work
Epic
Grand product vision. Epics can be broken down into user stories.
Sprint
Lasts for 2 - 4 weeks, and is typically made up of several user stories.
Story
Large unit of work that can be completed within one sprint. Stories are typically scoped
based on a Fibonacci scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8), where 1 is a relatively small story and 8 is a
relatively large story. An alternative to the Fibonacci scale is "T-shirt" sizing (XS, S, M,
L, XL). Can be broken down into tasks. Typically worked on by one or more team
members.
Task
Small unit of work that can be completed within days or hours. Can be broken down into
subtasks. Typically worked on by several team members.
Subtask
Very small unit of work that can be completed within a day. Worked on by one team
member.
Spike
A story or task for answering a question or gathering information.
Testing
Test Driven Development (TDD)
A method of testing software in which the tests are written before the software is built.
Continuous Integration
Software development practice in which team members integrate their work frequently
(i.e. check in their code). This ensures that issues are caught early by automated testing or
by other team members.
Unit Test
Tests small pieces of code, such as functions and methods, typically with mock data. For
example, testing the result of a function given a certain set of parameters. This should be
the backbone of your testing strategy.
Functional Test
Tests to make sure features work end to end. For example, testing that a user's settings
were updated upon clicking a save button.
Integration Test
A subset of Functional Tests. Tests to make sure that features or components are
compatible with each other.
Regression Test
A subset of Functional and Unit Tests. Ensures that new features do not break previously
working features.
Smoke Test
Tests very broad functionality, such as making sure that the software compiles, or that a
service is available.
Manual Test
Human testing. Very time consuming and costly. Should be minimized as much as
possible.
Task States
Pending
Has not been started.
Work In Progress (WIP)
Has been started. Several tasks can be WIP at the same time, especially for tasks which
are related to each other.
Code Complete and In Review
code complete, but it is in review by other team members. If your team does not have a
code review process, you can skip this state.
Done
Completed. The definition of "done" can vary from team to team, which may depend on
factors such as the existence of tests written by the engineer or QE, whether or not the
task has been committed to the shared code repository, etc. Whatever your definition of
"done" is, make sure that the definition is clear to the entire team.
Tools
Task Board
A board that organizes the tasks and their states for each team member, including tasks
that are Pending, Work In Progress, Code Complete and In Review, and Done. This can
be achieved with a physical board and sticky notes or with a software tool.
Burndown Chart
Line chart trending downwards from 100% to 0% work remaining on the y axis, and from
the sprint start date to the sprint end date on the x axis. Ideally, sprints should end with
the work remaining at 0%. If it's not, this may indicate that the team members need to
improve estimates.
Burnup Chart
Opposite of Burndown Chart. Line chart trending upwards from 0% to 100% work
completed on the y axis, and from the sprint start date to the sprint end date on the x axis.
Ideally, sprints should end with the work completed at 100%. If it's not, this may indicate
that the team members need to improve estimates.
